Latonia M. broke it down. She’s a shop steward and longtime hotel worker in the Chicago area. (Latonia doesn’t want to use her last name or the name of the hotel where she works.)

Housekeepers have been groped, trapped in bathrooms and surprised at the door by naked hotel guests.

Proponents of "right to work" laws often use lofty language to sell their agenda, with false appeals to freedom, among other high ideals.

But right to work is about freedom only in this way: It’s about taking away the freedom of working people to join together in strong unions.

A UAW representative recently returned from a trip to South Korea to try to secure the release of two key labor leaders jailed for their union activity. Since December 2015, Han Sang-gyun, who was president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has been imprisoned for representing his members. And last December, KCTU General Secretary Lee Young-joo also was arrested after a 10-day hunger strike and two years of house arrest. There are other trade unionists who are charged or incarcerated as well.

Welcome to the AFL-CIO's March Madness Sweet Sixteen! But instead of focusing on the hottest basketball teams, we're focusing on the MARCH part of March Madness. Not the month, but actual marches.

On March 20, the New Mexico Federation of Labor Executive Board unanimously appointed Vince Alvarado as its new president. Alvarado is the business manager and financial secretary for International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 49, a position he has held since 2010. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the SMART Local 49 Health Plan and Joint Apprenticeship and Training Council. Alvarado is a third-generation sheet metal worker originally from El Paso, Texas, who served in various leadership roles on the job and with his union for more than two decades. He is currently the only state federation leader in the country who comes from SMART.